UK 'needs green finance plan'

The UK government needs to come up with a plan to secure finance to meet the country’s carbon budgets because policy changes have led to a collapse in clean energy investment, according to MPs on parliament’s Environmental Audit Committee (EAC).

A new EAC report warns that clean power investment fell 56% last year, and is now at its lowest level since 2008.

The report said that the government’s Clean Growth Strategy does not do enough to meet legally-binding climate change targets, even if all its policies are implemented.

Changes to low-carbon energy policy in 2015 likely undermined investor confidence, cutting the number of projects in development, the committee said.

It added that privatisation of the Green Investment Bank and a reduction in European Investment Bank (EIB) lending may also have played a part in the fall in clean energy investment.

The committee called for the UK to maintain its relationship with the EIB after Brexit, “which would allow riskier early-stage green infrastructure projects in the UK continued access to development bank finance”.

A sovereign green bond could be issued by the government to set a benchmark for good practice and raise the capital needed to deliver projects.

The report also called for fixed-price contracts and a steadily rising carbon price to help meet the carbon budgets in the 2020s and 2030s.

“The government must urgently plug this policy gap and publish its plan to secure the investment required to meet the UK’s climate change targets.”

Renewable Energy Association head of policy James Court said: “This report perfectly chimes with the reality that our members are feeling.

“There is a real frustration that at a time of renewable costs plummeting and other countries steaming ahead, the UK is going backwards. Government must now move forward quickly by implementing the recommendations of the Green Finance Task Force that reported back in March.”